A Day on the Water — Smallmouth

The 3rd day I launched at the Pigeon River Mouth and paddled up to a backwater Channel were Smallmouth and Largemouth have taken small poppers and subtle floater divers for the previous 2 years.  The second fish was a big smallmouth that took a 1/0 White Dive banger hard.  I just about had her beat and was pulling straight up while she was boring straight down in the weeds right under the kayak.  The rod was a hybrid cobbled together from the butt of a nice 8 Weight St. Croix with a random tip half that came from a shorter...

I started out early covering a lot of water, finding no fish, seeing no beds.  I caught a fish while casting during a random down wind drift. After anchoring to fight it and making a cast from there I got  a better fish. Nothing for the next 2 hours as I explored far and wide.  I saw that the three amigos, Todd, Ken and Scott were getting fish closer to shore.  I anchored on the left flank of the conga line and I also started hooking fish on a couple of brown Clousers.  They were using pink flies including the...

I was expecting to fish deep water even though the lake levels had dropped over a foot from last year.  I was rigged with a clear intermediate slow sinking line. (A type 3 shooting Head works better). Lead eye Clousers or a similarly tied Tungsten bead head pattern would get down deep enough if counted down long enough before retrieving. In the lower Pinnebog River a few spin fishermen were catching fish on the east bank.  I had kayaked in so I landed on the west bank and mostly had that to myself.  I was averaging pretty close to 2...